Prosecution: "Officer O'Malley, why was your camera off from 2:35-2:40am, the precise time of the incident?"

The last poll option is not a valid reason to not deploy the cameras. Every officer will be required to explain every missing second of video and audio. Every missing second is extremely incriminating.

I agree with you and frankly I think having the camera would be a good thing for the officers. If anything it would prove if they were being reasonable and were attacked first. I think it's easy for any incident to devolve into a "He said/he said" situation so a recording of the incident would make that harder. After all isn't that the reason we have dashboard cams in the police cars now?

Slashdot cracks me upRed faced and angry about the coming Surveillance StateDamned happy to have every cop be a walking surveillance unitAnybody else see the irony?

Riiiight, because it's better to leave it as is. The word of the police vs the word of the citizen. They are already surveilling us. Cameras on cops is a means to at least attempt to keep them honest and provide a record when abuses of power occur.

I was chowing at the Chinese buffet the other day and I got to watch the cops do something funny, they had parked their car so that the license plat scanner was aimed at the street.It was set so that any car with a alert tied to it signaled the 'system' to set the driver up for a pull-over by somebody else (that wasn't throwing back coconut shrimp at that moment)If you stick a camera on every cop to keep them in line, they will be in a great big hurry to tie facial recognition to it and just use it to make their oppression all the more effectiveFace it they own the game and are miles ahead of you

Most in the Slashdot crowd would scoff at using the "nothing to hide" argument [slashdot.org] as it applies to more widespread surveillance of ordinary citizens. At the same time, they would happily use it as a justification for more widespread "surveillance" (e.g., transparency and monitoring) of police, intelligence services, and government in general.

I do not think this is an example of doublethink, or a double standard. It's not a double standard if the situations it's being applied to are, in fact, different. There is a very big difference between the private matters of private citizens and the actions of government employees in the conduct of their public roles. For that reason, always-on police cameras seem quite reasonable, so long as they can be switched off or set aside as soon as the officer goes off duty and resumes being a private citizen.

Many of the arguments raised in debunking the "nothing to hide" argument are worth considering, and should guide the proper implementation of police cameras and other "watching the watchers" efforts. I don't, however, think the arguments are forceful enough for us to not implement police cameras, though.

I thought JosKarith was being ironic. Since, you know, it's usually the law-and-order types that use the "nothing to hide" argument. What does it tell us that the same people who make that claim of ordinary citizens are afraid of their own actions being recorded?

On the other hand, anyone who works in store is probably under surveillance all day. I'm an office drone and there's a camera looking at me right now. Plenty of far less critical jobs are expected to deal with being filmed throughout their work shift.

So, why shouldn't cops - who are given the ability to use lethal force - be expected to work under the same surveillance that the guy flipping burgers for minimum wage does?

I think there's a big difference between CCTV and having a cam attached all day everyday. The footage should be inaccessible until something serious happens and someone a few steps up the pecking order authorises a specific time slot to be released. Otherwise there is potential for victimisation and private footage inappropriately ending up on reality shows etc.

As someone who has worked for four years in public safety software (particularly police dispatching, mobile computing, and communications), I can tell you that the cops (as any sane person) aren't fond of the idea of being put under a microscope. They have justifiable fears that the technology will be used in unfair ways against them.

For instance, we were going to be logging all messages. There was a legal requirement to be able to reconstruct situations months or years after the fact. Officers and dispatchers often have informal chats. They were concerned about content and people giving them grief for that.

Officers were also concerned that they were going to have NCOs and shift leaders riding their back every moment of a shift. This too was a justifiable fear - in one meeting I was in, a detachment shift supervisor wanted to use the data on how many calls an officer was taking and how long they were taking to clear them to determine who was slacking off. On the surface, it seemed like a good idea, but a) call clearance rates and call times aren't a good indication of quality (metrics rarely represent what they are meant to assess terribly well) and b) the officers would be hurling the computers out of the cars if they felt like this was going on.

The senior IS NCO for the division (a province) said 'We won't be using the systems for that. We want these systems to improve officer safety. We want officers to want to use them.". He went on to add that "You already know who is a 'participator' and who is a slacker without this to tell you if you're doing your job.". Wisely, the federal agency responsible had elected NOT to allow local shift supervisors to use the technology to witch-hunt officers.

Flash forward to today's discussion.

A sane strategy for cameras is: We review the data when there is a concern raised or a legal requirement to, the rest of the time, we don't look over the officer's shoulder. This creates a record of key happenings without micromanaging and making the officer feel watched at all times. We may use the cameras during tactical exercises for coordination. The officer can disable his camera when on break but most turn it back on when his break is over (and failure has a serious penalty attached).

This will serve to protect citizens, the police, and help in some court cases.

NOTE: Cameras aren't all seeing, all hearing, or all knowing. There is inevitably a lot that happens outside of the reach of the camera or happens in low light and sometimes even in hand-to-hand melee. It is often hard to understand prior context that isn't visible or to make out what the camera is showing or what the audio track includes. Cameras (where they have been used) are often as much of a source of confusion as they are of clarity.

They are worth having because they provide a possibility of clarity and they may, in some cases, help the public or the officers. That's a good enough reason.

The officers have to understand it isn't about witch hunts and it isn't about spying on them and never giving them any downtime.

Exactly. Officers in places where cameras have been deployed have actually seen far fewer police complaints filed, which means less cops losing their jobs. They've also seen allegations of excessive force plummet. Either the accusations were false previously and people know the cameras will tell the truth, which could lead to a charge of filing a false police report, OR the police were using excessive force before, and now know that they'll get bent over the barrel if they do it now. Either way, the police win, the public wins. Everyone wins.

"Quisat Custodies ipsos custodes" is a fragment of s rant by Juvenal and what he means is that your wife will be such a slut that she'll bribe the people you pay to watch her so she can screw everything that moves. Possibly including the watchment themselves. He's saying you can't trust women. It's not a comment on how to run a government.

It's still appropriate, but you should know where your quotes come from.

I agree 100%. Your average person doesn't get out of bed, shower, strap on at least 3 different types of weapon (our cops have a service pistol, telescopic club, tazer, mace, possibly more), and then spend their day either A) helping people or B) taking away the constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of citizens. Guilty and deserved, or otherwise. In the name of official business, it is their job to throw human beings in cages. It is necessary for them to do this. But for the life of me I can't understand why people would try to justify saying that additional evidence at any trial is a bad idea. I've never once heard a jury say, "Man, we really wish there was less evidence here."

Care to tell me how police carrying around cameras (meaning all of the cameras would be accompanied by a person and wouldn't pick up much more than the person could) is at all the same as a surveillance state? The US is huge; even if all police officers were to carry around cameras, it wouldn't be an effective surveillance state. Access to the data should be allowed only by court order, and should be deleted after a certain amount of time if it hasn't been used for some case.

Machine vision come into play. One cop with a camera is no big deal. 1000 cops with cameras is a logistics nightmare, but still workable. 1000 cameras all linked to facial recognition, license plate recognition, wants and warrants databases, and so on become a powerful tool for tracking and detaining "undesirables" in a fairly large region.

>One cop with a camera is no big deal. 1000 cops with cameras is a logistics nightmare, but still workable.

more so than the guns, radios, batons, etc.. they cary?

> 1000 cameras all linked to facial recognition, license plate recognition, wants and warrants databases, and so on become a powerful tool for tracking and detaining "undesirables" in a fairly large region.

not really, because they only record what the police are interacting with the in the first place. They are certainly not cover an entire a

I agree with pretty much everything you said. There are a lot of interesting programmatic and design questions that come up. The ONE place I have to nitpick though is that police departments work on shoestring budgets. Remember, if IA is doing its job, they'll have a healthy number of officers who are getting disciplined in one way or another, OR who are being investigated. If the cameras do their job, that number should plummet. Based on case studies in Rialto, complaints against the department dropped by

I think there's a lot of interesting questions here. Thus far, departments who have implemented it have chosen to just keep the data indefinitely.

I think you take the video away from the police department entirely.Put it in the hands of some other department (your town has a library right? vital records?)and never ever let the police have anything more than read access.

Sure, it's an inconvenience for the police, but so is missing or spoiled evidence.Why we'd trust the foxes to investigate their own crimes (IA), I don't know.

There are already cameras in cars, and police run public cameras everywhere. How does that data get warehoused, and how does it get collected. Also, who does the training on those cameras. At very least the storage and retrevial system has to be at least slightly compatable with task at hand.It seems to me, that the government and police where pretty capable of maintaining camera systems when its immediately convienant for them. I am also pretty certain, the logistical hurdle is very much accomplishable whe

Oh I totally agree, it IS a good thing. I'm more interested in the data management perspective. How do you take one day's footage from several thousand officers, dissect it, add metadata to associate specific police report/case numbers, correlate other videos, all without giving police direct access to those videos? How do you build a database that respects things like statutes of limitations on particular crimes? If you have a police officer using force in the video and the statute of limitations has passe

When a police officer is around you, you are being surveilled - by the police officer. If you're doing anything illegal in front of the police, expect to get in trouble. Police wear uniforms and are easy to spot. That's very different from having concealed cameras everywhere.

Though I can see your point, there are becoming more incidences either in fact or just in reporting of police officers behaving badly and lying to cover it up. I'm referring in general, not any specific case at the moment. One police department that has the mandatory cameras for officers and the police chief actually enforces it had a huge drop (88%) in citizen complaints and incidents where violence was used (60%). [nytimes.com] This makes a iron clad case for police cameras.

Plus sadly, this is where Google is correct. Privacy is dead. Any illusion of privacy we still have is just that, and illusion.

Slashdot cracks me upRed faced and angry about the coming Surveillance StateDamned happy to have every cop be a walking surveillance unitAnybody else see the irony?

No. The cop's entire presence is one of tacit surveillance.

You're equating a camera on every corner, in every business and (where possible) even in people's homes with the concept of agents of the government, while on duty, having a camera with them. With the former, everything is recorded all the time; with the latter, you're only recorded when you're in the presence of the cop/his car. You know when you're being recoded, and when you're not, so unless there's cops and cop cars everywhere it is not the sam

The last poll option is not a valid reason to not deploy the cameras. Every officer will be required to explain every missing second of video and audio. Every missing second is extremely incriminating.

Not to mention that these video cameras are, or will be, commodity devices; just have two cams on each cop. If one fails, meh - but if both fail: "Officer, you got some 'splainin' to do!"

"Every officer will be required to explain every missing second of video and audio."

Why? It doesn't happen now. In fact I think in Texas not long ago an appellate court ruled that police could destroy dash cam video footage despite specific requests from the defense that they preserve the footage. I agree wholeheartedly that officers SHOULD have to explain any missing footage, but every instance that I can think of suggests that the current justice system does have any perception that missing footage ref

So making them wear cameras is only one step on an endless fight against abuse. You're surprised? It's not a one-step process and then we win. You have to keep pushing. It's not as if they aren't constantly pushing from the other direction.

Look how long it's taken to win the nation-wide right to record an encounter with police and the fact that in spite of the clear nation-wide right, many police still confiscate/destroy cameras/phones. Boy, that effort must be worthless then... Except that before the main

Yes, it will likely happen. However, that is, in my opinion, insufficient disincentive, for the following reasons:

1.) If it "accidentally breaks" 50% of the time, it still means that half the time it's working, which is higher than the 0% we have now.2.) secondary units could be kept in the glove box; most juries would have a very difficult time believing that both cameras failed, or that a known-dangerous situation wouldn't warrant having both cameras on anyway, or that both police officers involved both had faulty cameras, or if only one went in that he/she was not following protocol....basically, the lack of evidence when there damn well should be would lend more credence to the victim than the police officer, leaving it in the officer's best interest to keep it working (or report it malfunctioning sooner than later).3.) It would help curb selective enforcement; officers would be more likely to more fully follow protocol.4.) random footage audits, like random drug tests, would assist in internal investigations; officers whose cameras are 'accidentally broken' during an audit would be much easier to penalize, again, keeping it in the officer's best interest to avoid having a malfunctioning camera.5.) "I have nothing to hide" is a reason frequently given for giving up one's privacy when prompted to do so. If it's true, then "I have nothing to hide" should most certainly hold accurate for people on the public payroll.6.) A highly trivial reason, compared to the major ones: checking cameras and footage in and out is a good way to add a few dozen jobs to the local precincts.

It will happen, of course...but if it even partially helps the situation at hand of "he said she said" where either no one trusts the cop (in cases where the officer was either genuinely right or ultimately wrong, but in a split-second decision situation), or victims of police brutality are further victimized by the 'ol boys club', then I'd say it's a hell of a much better use of both my tax dollars and Seagate hard drives than the use of either by the NSA.

But chances are YOU WANT SELECTIVE ENFORCEMENT.For the good of the community you want police officers to make value judgements.

If you leave officers to have to follow the letter of the law, those same terribly vindictive laws are going to lock a lot of otherwise good people away for years.If now all on film and archived, there's also the possibility of: as evident, officer X let this granny go free for this, we have record of it, selective enforcement, now my client (who is a terrible piece of trash) clearl

There are some laws that are clearly 'terribly vindictive', but I think the main problem that selective enforcement is aimed at helping with are overly broad laws. You may say then that those laws shouldn't be overly broad, and that is a good theory, but it has a major flaw in practice. Laws are often deliberately written to be somewhat broad because the lawmakers know they cannot identify all the edge cases, or when technology changes, and they don't like it when a person clearly violates what a law was meant to make illegal but the letter of the law didn't foresee that exact situation. Either the laws are written strictly, in which case people commit crimes and get away with it because technically the law didn't make it illegal, or they are written broadly with the result that people perform actions that are technically illegal, but officers or prosecutors know were not the intent of the law and don't enforce. The flip side is of course that it gives power to the officials to charge people with crimes for what seem to be non-crimes (this is where courts and juries can come in).

Take two examples from California. In one, the laws tried to be strict and explicitly listed what substances (drugs) were illegal. The result was criminals took the base drugs, made a small tweak to them, and presto, it was legally a new drug that the law didn't make illegal, even though it did the exact same thing as the parent drug. The legislature was constantly playing catch-up trying to add the never-ending list of new substances, and until they did, the substances were legal and the authorities couldn't do anything about them. The second case is the recent court decision regarding use of cell phones while driving. Again, the law intended to make driving safer by outlawing the use of cell phones while driving, but it was drafted before the proliferation of smartphones, and the lawmakers being not that technically inclined, specifically mentioned calls and text messages. The court ruled that therefore technically, only calls and text messages were illegal, any other use like playing games, was legal (the actual case was chosen to be a safe challenge and involved a person using their cell phone as a GPS for navigation). In both of these cases the narrowness of the law didn't allow for the laws to be used to prevent the actions they intended to.

So unfortunately, pick your poison: too narrow and lets edge cases or new technology get aware with murder (perhaps literally), or too broad and leave the discretion in the hands of the authorities.

If it "accidentally breaks" 50% of the time, it still means that half the time it's working, which is higher than the 0% we have now.

The problem with accidental breakage is that it it always occurs when it would have corroborated the defendants story. The problem with this ubiquitous recording is that it never seems to be able to be used for your benefit. My friend had his debit card used at a local branch ATM. it had never left his possession, so he was curious as to who had used it. He requested the tapes from the bank. Of course, the camera had not been working that day. Undoubtedly they would have been working that day if someone ha

there is no expectation of privacy for a public servant in the performance of his duty, period. Therefore, the "nothing to hide" argument is moot.Public oversight begins and ends with a truthful account of a public servant's actions. Such accounting can ONLY be achieved technologically with a camera, because we KNOW FOR A FACT that public servants LIE. If they are confronted with the truth, then their only defence to breaking the Law by which they expect to hold us to, is smashed by the facts as presented on that which *they* so vehemently (and perhaps ironically) oppose.

The won't be "accidentally" breaking when the perp is actually being belligerant, which is most of the time there is an incident. If we were to posit that the cop is telling the truth in the Michael Brown case, the weeks of disruption, rioting, looting, vandalism, and arson could have been obviated by the timely release of the video.

But many laws are designed with some level of discretion in mind. That is, the laws themselves are far more strict than any LEO would enforce, and thus they get to use their discretion to determine whether someone who is breaking a law is actually posing a threat to public safety.

Realistically the only time the footage would be viewed would be when there's an offense that warrants it, such as an officer shooting a suspect or a reported abuse. There's no way you could have every officer wearing a camera and every moment of video reviewed. Most of the solutions I've seen that are in place now don't keep every minute of every day recorded. They buffer 30 minutes or so and when the officer hits a button to indicate it needs to keep the footage it does.

If it is routinely inappropriate to enforce the law, they ought to change the law, not make exceptions for whoever they like.

I like the way you think, penguinoid! If the inappropriate law was equally applied, the law would likely be changed or discarded.

As an aside to this, I think we need to put sunset clauses on existing laws anyway. Every ten years or so, the law must be re-approved in order to stay on the books. Anything uncontroversial would just be passed easily. The other stuff would be rejected and we would move on. I think cameras on cops would hasten the need for cleaning the books of archaic laws that are not needed or equally enforceable.

see me on Facebook. Local undersherriff initiated a traffic stop in a dark territory valley (no cellular reception) while I was in my disabled vehicle waiting for traffic to go by before exiting to determine why I was having difficulty re-starting the engine.

Guess what? He jumped out of a black unmarked chevy 4x4 SUV and pulled a gun, commanding me to get on the ground so he could restrain me with handcuffs FOR ABSOLUTELY NO REASON, WITH ZERO PROVOCATION.

Tensions ran high for at least a minute while I desperately tried to calm the dude down enough to find out exactly who the fuck he was and what his problem was, or what crime he thought was being committed.

see me on Facebook. Local undersherriff initiated a traffic stop in a dark territory valley (no cellular reception) while I was in my disabled vehicle waiting for traffic to go by before exiting to determine why I was having difficulty re-starting the engine.

So, what you're saying is, when a child goes missing, that's a perfectly reasonable rationale for cops to go all Rambo on people, sticking guns in their faces and restraining them for no reason other than being in the general vicinity of where something might have happened some time ago?

There needs to be a way to disable the cameras for a short period of time. I don't think we need to see police officers using the restroom. Then there are times when officers have private conversations that are not work related. Do you really think it is valid to have anyone monitored every second from start of shift to end of shift? Would you work under those conditions?

There are some jurisdictions that are talking about having the cameras enabled wirelessly whenever the light bar comes on, and then they keep the video rolling until the cop stops the car, gets out, gets back in, and starts driving at the posted speed. So if he stops at a rest area, restaurant, or wherever in a non-emergency capacity, it won't automatically turn on. Of course he'll have the option to turn it on or off whenever he wants. But a cop whose camera is coincidentally turned off every time he's

We have this requirement of corporations where they must keep records of all electronic communications. Missing communications during a court case is considered to be 100% condemning on the part of the corporation that lost their data. So, I'm not saying this is working 100%, but if we can do this for corporations, can't the police do it for cameras too?

Dash cams in most/many/some police cars work when the officer engages his lights or sirens, passes a certain speed threshold, etc.

It's my firm belief that the men and women serving in our police force should, for example, be allowed to pee, eat a sandwich, or talk to their partner about how bad their mortgage company is without being recorded -- but at the same time, it's my firm belief that their enforcement should be documented.

Start by expanding the dashcam FOV and expand the triggers for dashcam recording to include a period of time after the opening and closing of the doors.

How to let officers pee without also letting them turn off cameras at every "inconvenient" time presents a challenge...

I've been thinking about getting a dashcam. I commute less than 40 miles round trip each day and yet almost every day I witness at least one bonehead move that could have killed someone. If I could record these, at least it could be put up on a wall of shame somewhere and maybe it ought to be admissible as evidence for attempted vehicular manslaughter. At the very least, if one of these maneuvers does eventually cause an accident, i will be able to present video evidence.
Some of the illegal maneuvers are

Simple: you can automatically activate and deactivate it in certain trigger conditions (light bar, high speed, etc.) but you always let the cop turn it on and off at will.

If the cop has been issued a camera, but it's not recording at the same time that he's arresting someone who accuses him of using excessive force, what's that going to say to a lawyer, or to a jury? "Well, your Honor, we had three police officers trying to subdue the subject in the car when they all had to discharge their weapons and fat

How to let officers pee without also letting them turn off cameras at every "inconvenient" time presents a challenge...

There's a simple solution: require that the cameras be always on, unless the officers calls in and [temporarily] logs-off to use the restroom.

Oviously, control of the cameras needs to be handled remotely anyhow, since individual officers have repeatedly shown that they can't be trusted not to turn off the cameras to avoid being recorded engaging in less-than-acceptable behavior...

I keep seeing this complaint, but it doesn't make sense. Are people assuming that for every 1 police officer, they will hire 1 video reviewer to watch that officer for his entire shift? That's silly.

Any real-world application, would be local recording on the device. When an incident is reported, the police officer logs the time of his response just like he/she already does all the time. He/she turns in his camera, and any video corresponding to the officer's incident report is then archived and tagged to th

if the potential suspect decides to sue for any kind of wrongdoing on the part of the police officer

The Supreme Court recently ruled that cities/counties can't be held financially liable for rights violations by their officers, no matter how egregious. And the officers themselves hold a professional immunity while on duty, so they already can't be individually sued.

"Oops, the off button was malfunctioning during the time of the incident."

One of my favorite things to do during a conference call is to wait for somebody to start some tirade after hitting mute and then to say "By the way, IT says they will have the mute button fixed by Friday."

Police wearing cameras have been trialled in Queensland. The cameras clipped to their uniforms and were tamper proof meaning officers couldn't delete footage. They had a requirement to wear them when ever the left the station. I don't however know the outcome of the trial, though from what I read storage of the video was the primary reason it didn't get rolled out.

Brisbane is going to be hosting the G20 summit shortly and I believe that they are having 70 police mounted cameras deployed for that.

There is a different relationship between police and the public between the two countries though. Of course no one likes being pulled over by the police but they are generally respected here and not seen to be abusing their powers.

Turns out wearing a camera is an optional piece of equipment for Queensland Police. They are not mandated but any officer can choose to wear one. The guideline is apparently 1 officer in a group should be wearing one when likely to encounter situations where people are likely to be under the influence. So they tend to be worn but the city cbd officers on night patrol through the entertainment areas.

a) You do need to archive it, and b) it cannot be something that happens if the cop wants it to.

Small device, 720p, two 64 GB cards (in case one breaks, happens to hit it's limit, etc etc.) They go in a rack at the precinct. Start of shift, you draw your camera, clip it on. The moment it leaves it's charging/upload rack, it starts recording. It continues to until it hit's it's rack again at night, whence it starts charging and uploading.

Camera 'breaks?' Radio in, and RTB for a new one. No working camera? Too bad, it's part of your uniform. You are no longer an on-duty cop.

Cop testifies about something where there SHOULD be video, but for some reason, isn't? His testimony is now considered unreliable.

Guess what? You, Mr. Police Man, get extraordinary powers when dealing with civilians. You have powers and authority above and beyond. Therefore, you should be scrutinized.

And yes, this is for your own protection, too. This eliminates any possibility of 'If you don't let me go, I'm going to scream that you grabbed my tits.' This reduces greatly IA's involvement in your life. "He was coming at me with a knife, and ignored my verbal warnings. Right about...here, on the video."

If it's recording all the time, the police unions are never going to accept it, because it is a major invasion of privacy. Nobody would want a camera recording when they use the bathroom, when they are on their lunchbreaks, et cetera and the Supreme Court probably would not allow it anyway.

Other departments have had a lot of success with the types of model I mentioned, where the police officer activates it when interacting with the public and it has some sort of buffer. It also seriously reduces the need

I disagree, but we'll go with that.
The camera now has an off switch. Any time the camera is not recording, the officer is off-duty, and does not have LEO authority and privileges. Note that this would be retroactive; you arrest a perp, it's all righteous, you get back to the station, and oh shit, your camera failed? Perp walks. On the spot.
In court, the cop does not 'testify,' he comments on the video. No video? The cop doesn't get to talk. Period.

You really seem to have an unrealistic expectation of how departments and the boards that oversee them will be allowed to use cameras. You also seem to have an unrealistic expectation that a prosecutor, judge, and jury will not press charges or convict someone simply because an officer did not have a camera present.

I think there needs to be a sea change in how the system works, yes. I doubt there will be.

The current LEO system is based on Victorian ideals about how some people are inherently noble and hone

If you do not trust fellow countrymen in traffic, every car gets a dash cam.
If you trust a police officer so badly that you want every action taped, the problem is somewhere else. All the good police work is hardly ever mentioned, and an occasional mistake is widely elaborated on my national media. Not because they are so common, but because they are so extremely rare! So rare that they make interesting news stories. Cops are only human, after all, and they are doing a mighty fine job. There is nothing as demotivational to work as having your every twitch recorded. The police force is already having great difficult recruiting new members. Let us not make it any harder.

Cops are not doing a good job. Estimates range from 400-1000 unjustified deaths a year. To put it into context, since 9/11, there may well have been 4 times as many unjustified deaths by cops in America as unjustified deaths by Al Queda.

That isn't acceptable by any standards.

Or perhaps if you'd like, I can put it another way. There have been three times as many incidents of manslaughter and murder by American cop per capita of population than there have been incidents of manslaughter or murder in Britain in total.

That number is WAY unacceptable.

Cops carrying guns confer no benefit to those in the area (80% of bullets fired by police handguns miss their target, they don't vanish and they do hit passers-by, sound crew, hostages, etc).

Cops carrying guns confer no benefits to law and order, since alternatives from stun guns to pain rays (microwave stimulation of nerve endings, if you prefer) to teargas (which isn't great but is less lethal than a lump of lead) already exist and criminals are less likely to carry when running is a more practical option than a shoot-out. That has always been the British experience, which is why you now get regular shoot-outs where British cops are stupid enough to carry where you'd previously have had maybe one a decade versus an armed response unit.

Cops carrying guns confer no benefits to the cop, since dead weight can result a cop becoming dead, accidental shootings are very likely to produce retaliation, and "utility" belts stop utilizing when they terrify locals, intimidate visitors, but bolster thugs who gain greater mobility and dexterity from not wearing them.

Look, this is all very simple. Too simple for nutters, perhaps, but simple nonetheless.

First, preventing crime by eliminating prime environmental and psychological causes is a good start. If there's no crime, there's nobody to shoot and nobody shooting back.

Second, preventing cops turning bad by preventing them developing a "them vs us" attitude is essential and you don't achieve that by giving them scrutineering powers and not those they are scrutinizing. It has to be a two-way street to prevent that kind of mindset.

But that requires one additional ingredient to work properly:

Third, preventing cops turning bad by preventing them from being have-a-go heros. They should work with the community, be a part of the community, guard it from within. And, like all good guards, they should NOT be on constant alert. They should be constantly engaging on a social level, not a paramilitary one. If a crime happens, let the criminal go somewhere where there ISN'T a huge danger to others. Inanimate objects can look after themselves, people need a bit more effort.

It is better to let a gang "get away" from the scene, with no bullets fired, be tracked safely and then be apprehended INTACT when it is safe to do so. Going in there guns blazing will cause excessive damage, risk the lives of those supposedly protected and served, and for what? Some carcases. No trial, no determination of the chain of events, no proof even that the dead body is the guilty party. It can't exactly answer questions in the dock, can it?

No, disarm the cops, give them high-res cameras (and maybe girls gone wild t-shirts, I dunno), and let them be what cops should be - good citizens. They are NOT the army, they should NEVER be allowed military-grade weapons, they should deal with matters calmly, quietly and sensibly.

If they're not capable of that, they're incapable of good. Of any kind.

Death stopped being binary some years back (suggest you read medical news) but this isn't about that. This is simple numbers. If device X kills N times out of 100 and device Y kills M times out of 100, where N != M, the lethality of the devices is not the same.

Its not just a matter of trusting/not trusting cops. Cops deal with lying scumbags almost as often as I deal with PHBs. So when it comes to their word against the suspect's, I'd think cops would love to have an unbiased record of each encounter to back up their story.

There is nothing as demotivational to work as having your every twitch recorded.

Worse than that, there is nothing worse than having every twitch misrepresented by a bunch of political dirtbags in the press.

Then it wasn't an accident. Simple as that. People seem to forget that you can build these devices to withstand any force a cop's skull is likely to take, and more besides.

Storage is a non-issue because you don't need to store a lot locally. Local storage can be limited to the time the cop is outside of radio contact plus the time to clear enough buffer that no information is lost. So unless the cop is riding a motorbike in a cage, it's just not enough to create serious issues.

Battery will be a bigger issue. It'll take a lot of batteries to keep transmitting at a decent resolution. However, as cops with guns cause more trouble than they prevent, that's also easy to fix. Sufficient batteries will consume no more weight than a sidearm plus extra ammunition.

Actually, it might not be that bad. With the proposed mandate for vehicle-to-vehicle communication, a cop radio could turn the entire road network into a gigantic adhoc wireless network. You don't need as much power for a short-range transmission. Might as well get some value out of these stupid ideas.

...the problem, this is not only totally feasible, it is also absolutely necessary.

I prototyped a video recording device that started recording the second it was popped out of its charging/data cradle and kept going for thirty six hours straight during longevity testing - on a cellphone battery, through a HD (720p) sensor, at 30fps, with audio, onto a 64GB memory card.

Hardware can be had for less than £75 per unit. That includes the memory card.

POLICE LIE. THEY BULLSHIT THEIR WAY THROUGH COURT CASES TO SECURE A CONVICTION, AND THEY FABRICATE EVIDENCE AND FORCE CONFESSIONS. So called "public oversight" is nothing of the sort. IA are POLICE. In England, we now have Police Commissioners, who are themselves serving police officers. We are in the process of winding down the IPCC (the Independent Police Complaints Commission) which is also staffed by serving police officers. They all piss in the same fucking pot!

And get off your privacy high horse, per Judge Munby in the Stafford case: PUBLIC SERVANTS IN THE COURSE OF THEIR DUTIES HAVE NO EXPECTATION OF PRIVACY. If you have a compact camera, keep the battery charged and carry it with you! RECORD every interaction you have or observe with police officers. I guarantee you, you will record evidence particularly when they "order" you to delete the file! (that's called "spoliation" and the mere mention of requiring someone else to do it is a criminal offence).

My overriding issue is that the prosecutor's office is almost always on a very friendly basis with the cops. It usually takes a media frenzy for them to "investigate" alleged police abuse. Usually the "investigation" is just a stalling tactic to defuse and wait out public outrage. Once things have moved onto the next Paris Hilton nip slip, they announce benign findings on a Friday evening before a three day weekend. It is a pattern we have seen over and over. Even when there is overwhelming evidence, the prosecutors just drag their feet and mostly let things slide.

With that as a backdrop, cops act with impunity. Every shooting results in all the cops at the scene emptying their guns. Backtalk results in a thuggish slam to the ground (or choke hold) with wails of "stop resisting" from the cops to crudely cover their unjustified violence.

When one of their own crosses the line in a big way, they shut their mouths, get amnesia, or blatantly lie for each other.

So with this as the backdrop, I see the cameras an being an small band-aid for a gaping wound. It won't hurt, but it probably won't do much for the real issue.

There was a story a few months back about a suburb of LA instituting a 100% camera policy and finding that the number of police brutality complaints dropping precipitously. The reasons for the drop were not as cut and dried as people will have you believe. A lot of complaints were dropped after the complainant was confronted with video and audio of the incident after the fact. Also, the officers were able to calm many situations down by simply stating that the entire incident was on camera and could be used as evidence in court.

Everyone who thinks police should be subjected to wearing a camera every second they're on duty should also have to wear a camera while at work.

The only locations at my place of work that do not (in theory) have cameras is the bathrooms. There are camera, with surveillance people watching them, literally everywhere. These arent shitty cameras either. They are high definition cameras with remote pitch, yaw, and zoom control.

Since this is what happens simply when people work with very large amounts of cash money, it should also be what happens when people work with very large amounts of power over folks that havent chosen to be subjected to that p

Because camera footage could have vindicated their behavior. And if a cop with a camera turns it off just before he shoots someone, especially an unarmed robbery suspect, do you really think a lawyer is going to just let that slide? The very existence of the cameras will be enough to change behaviors.

Yep, it changes behavior. But in the places where the officers have tried wearing cameras they decided it was the public that the officers interact with that changed. They came to the conclusion that there are much less officers beating and shooting people because the people know they are being filmed and so they don't report false accusations like they used to. Don't you know the police can do no wrong!